US drone strike in Yemen 'kills al Qaeda man behind Paris Charlie Hebdo and Jewish shop attacks'

A US drone strike has killed the senior Al-Qaeda figure who claimed of responsibility for the Charlie Hebdo and Jewish supermarket attack in Paris in January.

Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) said that its ideologue Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi was killed with his eldest son and other fighters in Yemen in a US air strike, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which cited the online video.

US sources said Washington believed Ansi was the AQAP commander of northern Yemen and that no civilians had been killed.

Ansi, an ideologue and former fighter, had appeared in several of the group's videos. In a message on 14 January, he said of the Paris attack that the "one who chose the target, laid the plan and financed the operation is the leadership of the organisation", without naming an individual.

A week later he called for lone-wolf attacks in Western countries such as America, Britain, Canada and France, as such operations were "better and more harmful".

White House spokesman Eric Schultz declined to comment on Ansi's reported death.

"I'll review what we said previously, which is we continue to actively monitor terrorist threats emanating from Yemen. We have capabilities postured in the area to address them," Schultz told reporters aboard Air Force One.

In the Paris attack, 17 people, including journalists and police, were killed in three days of violence, including a mass shooting at satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, known for its attacks on Islam and other religions. Jewish supermarket Hyper Cacher was also targeted, where four people were killed.

Ansi had also called for Yemeni Sunnis to confront the the Iranian-backed Shia Houthi militia that has taken over large parts of Yemen since September.

Ansi had fought in Bosnia in the 1990s and worked for al Qaeda in the Philippines and Afghanistan.

On 14 April, AQAP announced that one of its leaders, Ibrahim al-Rubaish, had been killed by a US air strike. Rubaish was a Saudi national released from the Guantánamo Bay prison camp in 2006.